The demand for high capacity and reliable telecommunications networks continues to grow as network and service providers upgrade their networks to provide more and increasingly advanced telecommunications services. In particular, the demand for high capacity and reliable digital cross-connect systems continues to grow. A digital cross-connect system is a specialized type of high-speed digital data and voice channel switch that is partitioned using specific instructions or commands that are separate from the normal signaling network and independent of any information that may flow through the cross-connect system. Reliability and availability are of paramount importance in these systems.
Unfortunately, digital cross-connect systems are often inflexible and have a limited line capacity that is difficult to increase or expand. This presents problems as a telecommunications network expands and the line capacity of the existing digital cross-connect system is met or exceeded. Generally, a telecommunications network designer or planner has no choice but to either replace the existing digital cross-connect system with an entirely new system, having a greater capacity, or to buy an additional digital cross-connect system to work in tandem with the existing digital cross-connect system. Both of these options are expensive, time consuming to install and administer, and often cause an interruption in service. Furthermore, there are often physical space limitations that prevent the location of additional telecommunications hardware such as a digital cross-connect system. As a result, the incremental cost to upgrade a telecommunications system far exceeds any immediate or near-tern incremental revenues that will be realized to offset the upgrade cost.
Inflexible digital cross-connect systems present problems when maintenance is needed on the network interface card of a particular circuit or connection. The maintenance of the network interface card often makes the particular circuit or connection unavailable which reduces the overall availability of the circuit or connection.